Solon's Atlantis: The Sources of Plato's Myth. An Ugaritic Tale Found in Egypt.

Solon’s Atlantis The sources of Plato’s myth. An Ugaritic tale found in Egypt ★ JOHAN S. ELLEFSEN Copyright © 2022 Johan S. Ellefsen All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of Americ iii CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 5 Part I – Fact or fiction 1. Framing the issue 11 2. The limitations of the fact-or-fiction inquiry 13 Part II - A compilation of a shared story 3. Solon’s manuscript on Atlantis 4. Solon’s Greek sources 19 22 Part III - Plato’s attempt to refashion the Greek historical schema 5. Plato’s new order 39 6. Athens was first 41 7. Disputing the Athenian tradition 47 8. Synchronizing Athenian and Egyptian chronologies 49 Part IV - Solon’s Egyptian sources 9. Pherecydes of Syros and the quest of Time 10. Solon’s Egyptian wisdom 57 64 11. The Egyptian source of Plato’s Phaedrus 274c-275b 67 12. The context of The Satire of the Trades in the New Kingdom literature 81 13. The story of the Astarte Papyrus and the Ugaritic Baal Cycle 84 14. Philo of Byblos and the secret writings of Thoth 91 Johan S. Ellefsen PART V – The list of the Atlantean kings 15. The Foundation of Athens 100 16. The names of the women 103 17. Poseidon as Yam 107 18. The twin Atlantean kings without Kronos 19. The translation of the names 113 20. The translation of Orichalcum 21. Atlas stands for Attar 22. The muddy waters of Mot 108 116 120 121 23. Eumelos/Gadeiros was Shad Qadesh 24. The descendants of the Dioscuri 125 132 25. Ampheres was a well-fitting translation of Atak 135 26. Elasippos sheds light on the name Helel son of Shahar 138 27. Mneseas can be understood as Yadi Yalhan 139 28. Azaes brings to light the meaning of the Ugaritic Zizzu 29. Euaimon glows over the dead Sharu 30. The two Autochthons 143 148 155 31. Mestor was an ‘unloose’ translation of Misor 158 32. The name Diaprepes can be distinguished as Yadid the hero 160 33. Conclusion on the relation between the Egyptian and the Ugaritic myths 162 Part VI - Description of the Atlantis in relation to Plato’s dialogue 34. The city planners 166 35. Description of the Island of Atlantis 36. A city next to the sea: wealth and war 171 174 37. The city as part of the cosmos: the circular city 178 38. The Greek tradition: from the Underworld to the Nile and back to Atlantis 181 2 Atlantis 39. All the Egyptian roads lead to the Underworld 190 40. The Fields of Yam and the muddy waters left in the Ocean 191 41. The location 196 42. The Topography 197 43. The rituals and abundance of the Fields of Reeds and Hetep 199 44. The circular city as part of the texts juxtaposed to the Astarte Papyrus 203 CONCLUSION NOTES 213 216 BIBLIOGRAPHY 273 3 Johan S. Ellefsen 4 Atlantis INTRODUCTION Plato’s Atlantis has captivated the dreamer and the erudite alike with the splendor of the unknown. The myth of Atlantis does not drink from the Homeric stream, nor it was treated in tragic plays of ancient Greece.1 Plato’s Atlantis is a story where Greek and Egyptian myths converge. Yet, this version of the Atlantis myth and its alleged Egyptian source seem to have been a mystery to his contemporaries, who cite to Plato as the only known source of the myth.2 Even today, and despite all the speculations that surround Plato’s Atlantis, we know nearly nothing about the origin of the myth.3 Plato did not invent Atlantis –at least not all of it. In the mid 360s B.C. Plato was developing his theory on the planetary motions. In preparing to discuss this difficult subject at the Academia, the myth of Phaethon came up. This myth told how Phaethon bragged about being the son of Helios. In a reckless attempt to show off, he took the Sun’s chariot on his own. Unable to control the horses and keep them in the path of his father, he burnt up all that was upon the Earth. Plato maintained that most Greeks ignored the real meaning of this myth. Behind it –he argued– was a description of the oscillation of the celestial bodies, where the Sun moving closer at long intervals created cyclical destructions on Earth. Aristotle’s view was that the Pythagoreans already reached a similar conclusion, as they used the myth of Phaethon to explain the origin of the Milky Way. Eudoxus of Cnidus, another of Plato’s pupils at the Academia, stood out in these discussions. He recently came back from Egypt, where he studied astronomy and mathematics, and gathered materials for a book on Egypt. He confirmed that the Egyptian priests attested since ancient times that 5 Johan S. Ellefsen they had calculated many of the planetary motions and that they understood the oscillation of the Sun as fact and not as a mythical legend. This interjection touched upon an uncomfortable topic for Plato. Plato’s detractors accused him of plagiarizing from the Egyptians his description of an ideal state and its caste system –as described in the Republic.4 As in the myth of Phaethon, the implication was the same: He was accused of copying the knowledge and laws of ancient Egypt and then claiming that the Athenians discovered and once lived according to them. Nowhere was this critique more manifest than in the Busiris of Isocrates.5 The Busiris was a rhetorical exercise, a parody exalting a subject unworthy of praise. There, Busiris was praised as the legendary king who modeled the ancient constitution of Egypt in the manner of Plato’s Republic; instead of the grim popular tale among Greeks, where Busiris played the role of a cruel Egyptian ruler that sacrificed and ate the Greeks who touched the Egyptian soil. Isocrates characterized as imitators those philosophers that used the Egyptian constitution as the model for their own ideal city: We will find . . . that in respect of [the Egyptian] constitutional system, which enables them to preserve their kingship and the other aspects of their state, they show such excellence, that philosophers who set out to treat these subjects choose to praise the Egyptian constitution, and that the Lacedaemonians, by imitating in part the arrangements there, achieve the best organization of their own city. For the policy that none of the fighting-men may leave the country without the approval of the authorities, the practice of communal meals, the physical discipline, the guarantee that none need neglect his public duties through lack of necessities of life, and that none [of the military class] spends time on other trades, but that all devote their attention to their arms and their campaigning –all these features they have borrowed from Egypt.6 6 Atlantis This same accusation reverberated in other authors. The division of castes and a distinct military class –Aristotle claimed– “does not seem to be a discovery of political philosophers of today or one made recently . . . it is said to have been established in Egypt by the legislation of Sesostris . . . The antiquity of all of them is indicated by the history of Egypt; for the Egyptians are reputed to be the oldest of nations.”7 For Plato, Isocrates’ noble character and rhetorical skills made him worthy of the utmost praise,8 but his Busiris must have felt like a personal attack. It made him look like one of the characters in Aristophanes’ play Birds, where a parade of thinkers and swindlers were trying to peddle a set of laws originally written for a remote, barely-heard-of town, for a quick profit. By no means must Plato have liked to be the target of these critiques or the subject of a parody that devalued his philosophical ideal state. He thought that the goddess Athena inspired the primitive Athenian laws and constitution and, as such, they could not have originated in Egypt. But this idea was contrary to Greek orthodoxy. Since the times of Herodotus and Hecataeus, Greeks accepted that Egypt was one of the oldest civilizations and that many of the fundamental aspects of Greek political institutions and religion were borrowed from Egypt. Then, Eudoxus proposed a solution that could support Plato’s view on the priority of the Athenian constitution over the Egyptian. Eudoxus claimed that in the earliest periods of the Egyptian history, the Egyptians used the lunar cycle. Therefore, he cleverly conjured that in the earliest periods of the Egyptian history the word for ‘year’ referred to what the Greeks called ‘month.’ This interpretation significantly reduced the early Egyptian chronology. With Eudoxus’ novel theory as background, Plato wondered if he could prove that the institutions of the Athenian constitution were indeed the oldest. To prove this theory, he necessarily had to start with the foundational myth of the city of Athens at the time the gods allotted the Earth among themselves. Then, Plato realized that some years before Eudoxus came back from Egypt, he was studying the Egyptian tale of Theuth for the Phaedrus. As it will be shown in this book, this tale of Theuth (i.e. Thoth, the Egyptian god of writing) was part of a series of translated texts brought from Egypt that were in Plato’s family since the time of Solon. Among these translated 7 Johan S. Ellefsen texts, Plato remembered that there was an Egyptian tale that mentioned the foundation of two rival cities and a war of the Egyptian gods and the god of the sea. This myth resonated with the foundational myth of Athens, where Athena won the patronage of Athens over the god of the sea Poseidon. If he could demonstrate that both tales were relating the same story, this Egyptian myth would put the foundation of Athens right at the beginning of the Egyptian civilization. In the chapters that follow, I will explain how Plato put together this theory and framed it as the story of a war between Athens and the kingdom of Atlantis. This book uncovers the sources of Plato’s Atlantis and traces the origin of the myth to its birthplace. The trail of evidence will lead us to a three-thousand-year old Egyptian papyrus recounting a story brought from Syria, as well as some obscure Greek traditions preserved in the midst of the Arcadian mountains. Many of the materials treated here have never before been connected to the study of Plato’s Atlantis. This new line of inquiry also reveals Plato’s main motivation to write about an Egyptian story, an ambitious endeavor that was ultimately unfulfilled. He intended to praise the ancient deeds of the Athenians by giving priority to the foundation of Athens over the prevailing idea that the Egyptians were a more ancient civilization. In doing so, Plato aimed at rebutting the accusations of plagiarism by arguing that the Egyptians borrowed from Athens its ancient laws and caste system, thus validating his description of ancient Athens in the Republic. Plato set the stage of this narrative by giving a brief description of the two kingdoms at war, Athens and Atlantis. He described the kingdom of Atlantis in the two short introductory chapters contained in the Timaeus (20d-27c) and the Critias. It was described as a flourishing civilization in another epoch, at the dawn of the Greek city-states. This prosperous civilization ruled the confines of the known world and went to war with other nations. Plato was very specific as to the description of the kingdom of Atlantis and the names of its first kings. He believed that the Ocean surrounded the continents of Europe, Asia and Africa and that a larger continent enclosed the whole Ocean. The island of Atlantis was between these two continents, in the midst of the Atlantic Ocean, opposite to the Pillars of Heracles –as the Strait of Gibraltar 8 Atlantis was known at that time.9 Along the shore of the island of Atlantis, there was a large plateau crisscrossed by a grid of water channels. These channels were connected to the canals that surrounded the royal palace, which was built over a hill enclosed by several rings of land and water. This hill was the source of two springs; in one, the water came up hot, but the other gushed up cold water. A covered water canal and a line of bridges connected the palace to the sea. Plato also gave the names of the first kings who apportioned the island of Atlantis, the surrounding islands and the Atlantic coast among themselves. Their names were: Atlas, Gadeiros-Eumelos, Ampheres, Euaimon, Mneseas, Autochthon, Elasippos, Mestor, Diaprepes and Azaes. The story goes that the Atlantes invaded Greece and the Athenians led the resistance against them. Then, after the Athenians vanquished the Atlantes, floods and earthquakes destroyed both, Athens and the entire island of Atlantis. Only an impenetrable mud was left where the island of Atlantis once stood. Plato stated that the floods did not affect Egypt because it was protected by the Nile;10 thus, allowing the argument that the story of Atlantis was preserved in Egypt, while in Greece the floods caused by rain and other cataclysms swept through the mountains and other highlands carrying away civilized men. Barely a few unlettered and uncultured mountaineers without memory of the past were spared. While the Egyptians preserved this story in their writings, Plato asserted that the Greeks only retransmitted a faint oral tradition. According to Plato, the Atlantis story was among the records found in the temple of Neith at Sais, in the Delta of the Nile in Egypt. The Egyptian priests told this story to Solon (638-558 B.C.) during his visit to the temple of Neith. Solon translated part of the story and brought a manuscript to Athens, where it was preserved in his family until Plato’s time. Plato’s introductory chapters found in the Timaeus and the Critias may correspond to Solon’s preparatory draft and his list of the Atlantean kings. Hence, it would be appropriate to call this story Solon’s Atlantis. Although Plato said that the origin of the story of Atlantis was a nine-thousand-year-old Egyptian account preserved until Solon visited the temple of Neith, he also placed the events of the Atlantis invasion within the context of Greek mythology: in the 9 Johan S. Ellefsen times of Cecrops, the founder and first king of Athens, and the kings that preceded Theseus, the unifier of Attica (Plato, Critias 110a). The ancient Athenian chronologies placed the reign of Cecrops in 1582/81 B.C. and the reign of Theseus in 1259/58 B.C.11 Unlike the rest of Plato’s dialogues, no philosophical dialogue followed the description of Atlantis because unfortunately the narrative of the Critias was left unfinished.12 By leaving the dialogue incomplete, Plato had “let a djin out of the lamp . . . [who] grant[s] the wishes of all interpreters.”13 For more than two thousand years, thinkers with all sorts of backgrounds have tried to explain, finish or emulate this incomplete story. Yet, under scrutiny, these interpretations are lacking, and like Homer’s Odysseus, every voyage ends up adrift in a mysterious island. The myth of Atlantis remains an unsolved mystery to this day. 10 Atlantis https://www.amazon.com/Solons-Atlantis-sources-PlatosUgaritic/dp/B0BTJCLT2M 11 Johan S. Ellefsen                 NOTES   1 Although the Atlantis myth was not part of Homer’s epic cycle, many modern authors believe that the structure of Plato’s Atlantis was based on Homer’s Odyssey, VII, 129-54, when he described the Phaeacian court in Scheria. See, e.g., Zdravko Planinc, Plato Through Homer: Poetry and Philosophy in the Cosmological Dialogues, p. 23 (University of Missouri Press, 2003); Catherine H. Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues, p. 473 n.78 (University of Chicago Press, 2009); Jürgen Spanuth, Atlantis: The Mystery Unravelled, p. 155 (Citadel Press, 1956). 2 Alana Cameron, “Crantor and Posidonius on Atlantis.” Classical Quarterly, p. 84 (Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 81-91, Cambridge University Press, 1983) (pointing out that Plato’s contemporaries did not believe in the historical reality of Atlantis, and analyzing the controversy that arose two generations after the death of Plato. Cameron argued that absent a confirmation of the Egyptian origin of the Atlantis myth, “Plato’s wonderful story has to stand entirely on its own”). J. Rufus Fears, “Atlantis and the Minoan Thalassocracy: A Study in Modern Mythopoeism.” Atlantis: Fact or Fiction?, pp. 108-09 (pp. 103-34, Ed. by Edwin S. Ramage, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1978) (remarking the silence of Herodotus, Thucydides and Isocrates on Atlantis, and pointing out that Isocrates, a Plato contemporary and a companion of Socrates, wrote about the enemies who attacked Athens in the earliest periods in his Panathenaicus 189-95, but he did not mention the Atlantes). 3 Pierre Vidal-Naquet and Janet Lloyd, “Atlantis and the Nations.” Critical Inquiry, p. 300 (Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 300-26, 1992) (“[D]espite all efforts, nobody has been able to prove that this myth was ever told before Plato recounted it.”); Phiroze Vasunia, The Gift of the Nile: Hellenizing Egypt from Aeschylus to Alexander, pp. 233-34 (University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles, 2001) (“Plato . . . is reflecting a relatively recent state of contact between Egyptians and Greeks, and it would be foolish to infer that he was privy to an Egyptian tradition of genuine antiquity. At any rate, there are no Egyptian sources, 12 Atlantis from the earliest historical period to Plato’s day, that validate the Greek story of Atlantis.”). 4 Proclus, Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus 1.75.30-76.10. 5 Niall Livingstone, A Commentary on Isocrates’ Busiris, pp. 50-53 (Brill, Leiden, 2001). 6 Isocrates, Busiris 17. 7 Aristotle, Politics 7.1329a-b. 8 Plato, Phaedrus 278e-279b. 9 The dominant opinion among Greeks was that the Pillars of Heracles were located in the Strait of Gibraltar as the gates to the Mediterranean Sea. This was the notion expressed by Pindar (Olympian Odes 3.43; Nemean Odes 3.21; Isthmian Odes 4.11) and shared by Plato (Phaedo 109 a-b). While some authors opined that the ‘pillars’ were the rock of Calpe (Gibraltar) and the rock of Abyla, Abila, or Abylica (Ceuta), others identified them with two pillars in the sanctuary of Heracles in Gadeira (Cadiz). Strabo, Geography 3.5.5; Aelian, Varia Historia 5.3 (“Aristotle affirms that the Pillars of Hercules were first called the Pillars of Briareus.”). 10 Plato, Timaeus 22d. See Diodorus, Bibliotheca Historica 1.10.4 (“[I]f in the flood which occurred in the time of Deucalion most living things were destroyed, it is probable that the inhabitants of southern Egypt survived rather than any others, since their country is rainless for the most part.”). 11 Marmor Parium, entries 1 and 20. The Parian Marble is a stela found in the island of Paros, which was inscribed around 264/63 B.C., and currently in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. This stela recorded some major events from 1582 B.C. to 299 B.C. The principal work devoted to the study of the Parian Marble remains the work of Felix Jacoby, Das Marmor Parium (Berlin, 1904). For the Attic chronicles, see Phillip Harding, The Story of Athens: The Fragments of the Local Chronicles of Attika (Routledge, London/New York, 2008). 12 To be unfinished seems to have been the fate of the Atlantis story. Before Plato, Solon also did not complete his poetic work of the Atlantis story he brought from Egypt (Timaeus 21c). 13 Harold Cherniss, “Some war-time Publications concerning Plato.” American Journal of Philology, p. 252 (Vol. 68, pp. 225-65, 1947) (“That it is easier to conjure the djin out the bottle than to get him back into it again.”). 13